Pilot Project
by AbsoluteNegation
Summary: In the final days of the humans' war against the aliens, Kenren and Goujun make independent Very Bad Decisions. Probably. KenrenxGoujun. COMPLETE.
1. Countdown

**Countdown**

 **Nothing this sneaky should go this well. He kept expecting alarms to start going off, doors to start slamming shut, or for the kid to decide to resist or start talking or something. Not that Kenren would understand any of it if he did, but it could certainly be enough to get them spotted. He couldn't let that happen, no matter how fucking stupid he'd been to do this in the first place. He was a man of his word, even if it was given only to himself and was objectively bloody idiotic.**

 **Either way, his career was over. The only question was whether his life was going with it.**

 **Kenren stopped at a t-intersection in the tube, closing his eyes as he mentally ran over the map he'd memorised and then incinerated. They weren't far now, the maintenance tubes running a much more maze-like and yet direct course than the corridors did. Left here, and then a drop a little more than a hundred metres ahead. They just had to make it there, and then down the ladder and they would be on the right level. After that it should be fairly easy until they got to the ship. Kenren glanced back at the kid (he'd been thinking of him as that ever since he'd first seen those huge golden eyes and the grin that formed around a mouthful of meat bun (well, protein bun, anyway; it's the little fictions that keep you going sometimes), watching him take everything in, avid and intelligent, calculating in a weirdly innocent way. It was the kind of look you got on the nerd kids in science class, though, not the trained observation of a soldier, and that made Kenren wonder. He nodded at the kid and got one back, then started moving down the tube, grateful that the kid seemed to understand what was going on at least well enough to keep quiet.**

 **The decision hadn't been a difficult one. Looking back later he would realise that it hadn't actually been a decision at all. He had managed to get Aline to let him get in to have a look at the pilot who definitely didn't exist, needing more information for his handler, and even now his stomach tightened with the ghost of the twisting that had hit him when he saw the kid in his cell, munching away, for all the world as if he wasn't a prisoner of war. He'd turned huge eyes and that ridiculous grin on Kenren, showing the scarring on one side of his face and down his neck, and fuck if he didn't look like just about any kid back home. If he'd been human Kenren would have pegged him at eighteen or nineteen, just barely old enough to volunteer to die. He remembered being that young, several lifetimes ago. Then he had thought about the other pilot the army had recovered, apparently half-melted and comatose, locked down and Disappeared less than twenty-four hours after capture. He had wondered if the two of them had known each other. Kenren hadn't even found out about the other one until they were already gone, but this one was here, and alive, and maybe it was completely insane, but it took less than one second for him to know in his gut that he was going to steal the kid.**

 **There hadn't been time for elegant plans. As best he could figure he'd had maybe fifteen hours between when he saw the kid in his medical cell and when they'd be taking him away to wherever they had taken the first one, never to be seen again, and not so much as a ripple in the information feeds to tip anyone off that that pilot had even existed. People might get ideas about hope, and hope was dangerous; they would only wind up even more disillusioned than ever when the army tore that hope apart and left the whole race stained with its blood because no army just wants to end a war. An army wants to** ** _win._**

 **Fifteen hours wasn't much, and he didn't have as well-developed a network on this base as he did on some others. This was only his third round out here, and if it wasn't for Aline, he probably wouldn't have any. She'd been glad to see him, and they'd slipped back into the old patterns when he'd first turned up. Thanks to her he had a semi-reliable network that he might be able to use once, but that would be it. There just hadn't been enough time to cultivate the elasticity of bond that would allow him multiple trespasses, which meant that apart from maybe Aline this whole station was about to be one crispy bridge.**

 **Kenren had thought fast and used what he could, getting Aline to set him up with a security pass for the med cells and a cloaked override to use in one of the bays where a couple of her people had set up empty shuttles as Plan-B escape pods if he couldn't get to his own small ship, which had been manually moved to an unused cargo bay. If everything worked right, it would look like a bay malfunction, with his ship drifting out along with whatever other crates and old equipment no one wanted anyway, looking like a part of an accident that was going to cause someone a lot of paperwork, and not much else. Plan-C was one of three very small and very uncomfortable crates hidden in various garbage containment areas, to be dumped much like the cargo bay but without any kind of power to get them anywhere. They would have to wait until they were picked up by someone in an outside ship, and fuck only knew if Aline's contact there would even bother. This plan was, to put it bluntly, optimistic fucking suicide.**

 **Kenren stopped at the edge of the drop tube and peeked over the edge to make sure there were no unexpected people in it, down or up. Hunched over in the small space, he turned to the kid (who didn't have to duck at all) and motioned at him to go down the ladder. It was best not to speak, even if the kid could understand him which, it had been firmly established, he couldn't. Thing was, this kid was army, too, just on the other side; even if he didn't know what he was heading toward, he probably had a real good idea of what he was getting away from. When Kenren had taken the shackles off him there had been a tense moment, a wary sizing up, and while neither one of them exactly trusted the other one, it was pretty clear that they were in this part together. The big question was what would happen once they were safely away from here. Was he going to have to fight? Cuff the kid up again? Not that he figured that would be easy. He might look like a runt, but the kid moved with the ease of someone comfortable with a fair amount of power at his disposal. Kenren would bet credits to donuts that at the very least the little fucker was packing a punch like a freight train.**

 **They reached the bottom of the ladder and it took Kenren a moment to orient himself, remember which tube to take, and to prepare himself for the hunching before they could get underway again. Huge golden eyes regarded him, and fuck if the kid didn't look ready to bounce off down that tube like it was first night of furlough, though he had to know that this was a dangerous game, and he was playing with even fewer cards than Kenren was. He nodded and gestured to the tube curling over a little bit to enter, cursing under his breath at whoever decided that there was some kind of maximum engineer height and built accordingly. At least it wasn't much further, the bay where Kenren's tiny ship had (hopefully) been stashed only some two-hundred-odd metres from that last drop.**

 **Every step now made him more nervous, every moment of non-discovery making the next one more pregnant with the possibility of disaster; flicks always made things go wrong right about now, for drama, but if anything -** ** _anything_** **\- went wrong for Kenren and the kid it wouldn't be exciting at all. They'd just wind up fucked. Kenren would be killed and the kid taken back to captivity with a new grudge painting a target on his back, and with Kenren's handler in the hot seat.**

 **Damn it, he'd been doing so well not thinking about Goujun. Not even a chance to say goodbye, after everything. Kenren's chest tightened with the thought, but he did his best to quash the intrusion, needing to stay focused. The issue of his commanding officer and the way they'd left things was going to have to wait. If he was alive in twelve hours, he'd have time for feelings and regrets, but until then the kid needed him. Everyone did. Until then, Kenren wasn't his own.**

 **As he made his way through the tube he couldn't help but wonder why the kid had decided to trust him. Maybe it was just because Kenren looked different from the others, or maybe he remembered the first sight of Kenren, the grin returned with a smile...or maybe the kid just had nothing to lose. He'd watched Kenren carefully swallow the pill with the biodampers in it, and had obediently done the same when Kenren handed him the other one, though he couldn't possibly know what it was for. Hell, Kenren didn't even know if they would work on the kid's body. He knew absolutely fuck-all about how the other side worked, apart from what the humans had learned of what Kenren had recently come to think of as the biomechs - the giant biological fighting apparatuses that people like this kid piloted - which wasn't all that much. The existence of pilots had been a complete surprise to everyone after more than eight years of fighting the fucking things, which was as clear a picture of how things were going as Kenren could imagine.**

 **The little indent in the wall of the tube that indicated a hatch appeared just a little way ahead of them, and Kenren looked back at the kid, giving him a reassuring little nod. The kid grinned back at him and nodded, too, and Kenren reached into the pouch on his belt for the scanner and the little jammer for the door. It'd be easier to just forge or steal an engineer's pass, but that would leave a record of the door having been used, and he needed a pristine failure cascade in the logs for this. They might still figure it out eventually, of course, but it would take at least days of dedicated checking, and he and the kid would be long gone by then.**

 **He held out an arm to tell the kid to stop behind him, and he took a moment to scan the room beyond, to make sure there were no unexpected people in the bay. It was all but entirely unused - which was why they had chosen it - but many a fantastic plan had failed because of a detail overlooked or forgotten, and the stakes here were just too fucking high to let that happen. The bay looked clear (without even his or the kid's bodies turning up on the scan, thank fuck), so he slipped the jammer into the manual bypass slot designed to make sure that a failure in identification by the mainframe didn't leave anyone trapped inside in case of emergency. It was a good system, and the only real weakness. But that was always the trouble, right? The meat was just too fucking fallible.**

 **After a moment of mechanical confusion the door slid open. If the jammer had done its job properly, it would have posted a time stamp four minutes and thirty-eight seconds from the moment Kenren used it. That should give them enough time to get into the ship and to set the override in motion, so that that first jam would look like an integrated part of the cascade. Kenren muttered a soft curse of a prayer to Luck as he spotted his ship hulking near the hull door, and he grabbed the kid's wrist, taking an observing peek out the hatch to make sure nothing was out of place, and no one was around. Machinery was fallible, too, after all.**

 **Having ascertained that the bay was indeed empty, he bolted from the hatch, the little pilot in tow, and moved all but silently across the floor to the silent bulk of his little ship, relief sweeping through him just to see it. Kenren opened the hidden manual panel with a key that he slipped into a normal-looking crack, and turned the handle inside it until the door opened far enough for them to slip through sideways. He didn't have time for more. Closed the panel with a near-silent** ** _snick_** **and gestured the kid to go through first. Those oddly golden eyes studied him for a moment, and Kenren nodded (** ** _you can trust me_** **). The young pilot seemed to understand, and slipped through the opening, Kenren right behind him to open an identical panel on the other side to close the door after them. It was imperative that they not use any power they didn't absolutely have to, though the larger jam would cover a little.**

 **His heart beating loudly in his ears, Kenren led the kid to the helm, gesturing to the co-pilot's seat and then slipping into his own. This was the big test, the bit where he had to trust and hope that Aline hadn't steered him wrong, or that any of her people hadn't decided it was better to turn him in. He trusted her, though, from long experience, and so he had to trust her judgement in comrades. It wasn't as if everyone wasn't sick to death of this fucking war already, and that the home team looked like losing was becoming a more and more inescapable fact, so they were at least as likely to be okay as not. And that was the end of it; either he was right or he wasn't. He was about to find out which. Kenren switched on the auxiliary systems, stuffed the override into the port and waited.**

 **For a long moment nothing much happened. Kenren could hear that the kid wasn't breathing either, listening, waiting. Then a series of lights began flashing around the bay, at hatches and doors and the floor guidance lights for the cargo shifters, the interior lights flashing for a moment, and then everything going dark. When the lights came back, they were almost blinding, everything lighting at once and the bay doors opening - even the inner door to the protective airlock, though the external stayed closed tight, protecting the crew on the other side - a sudden shift in pressure dragging the ship and the cargo crates out and into space. The ship was big, though, and Kenren had to use pneumatic thrusters just a little to help it along, to ensure that it got lost among the other things. They tumbled slowly away from the larger ship, power cloaked, both of them silent, as if speaking would give them away, and Kenren realised he was holding his breath again when his lungs began to ache and demand release.**

 **He exhaled heavily and looked to the kid, who grinned, nodded, and put a hand over his mouth to tell Kenren he understood what was going on, and that they weren't out of danger yet. Kenren looked down at his controls, then out at the big ship, which didn't seem to be moving away very quickly at all, and set a timer for two hours. He looked to the kid, pointed at the clock, and waited for the nod. Grinning, he leaned back in his chair and took his first deep breath in what felt like days.**

 **They just might make it out alive, after all.**


	2. Launch

**Launch**

There was a stack of papers on his office desk. They weren't _unfinished_ business, necessarily; they were mostly there so that Goujun could shuffle through completed assignments and successful missions at moments of stress and remind himself of greater travails than these. He could remind himself, for instance, that the aliens had most recently attacked and taken no less than three military bases surrounding Europa, which put their vanguard within a day's flight and a jump of Earth. He could remind himself that while two of the giant aliens had been taken down eventually by the mechs, the military was still _missing_ a leg and most internal organs from one of them. Compared to these, giving a new agent a mission was supposed to be the proverbial piece of cake. Still, if he were to shuffle the papers in a manner proportionate to current stress, they would be blurring in his hands as he waited for his latest agent.

The knock on the door was an upbeat little two-one-two rhythm, an un-military quality to it that he couldn't help but describe as _peppy_. It instantly set his teeth on edge and, having read the file in question, he was very much under the impression that the effect was both deliberate and intended. "Come in," he called evenly.

Kenren, when he came in, turned out to be both surprising and precisely expected. He wasn't in uniform, which Goujun hadn't expected - it seemed rather blatant a provocation even for someone whose exploits the file enumerated with the sort of tooth-gritting devotion to detail that indicated towering frustration on the part of his former superiors - but he was exactly as charming and unnecessarily good-looking as described, as he sauntered over to Goujun's desk, saluting in a way that deftly blended technical correctness and practiced insouciance. "Captain Kenren, reporting for duty, sir." His voice was so perfectly modulated into nearly-not-nonchalance that Goujun had to marvel at it, in an academic way.

Goujun looked him over, and raised an eyebrow. "Is that the attire in which you usually report for duty?"

Kenren managed somehow to sigh non-vocally. "No. Sir." The pause was, down to nanoseconds, exactly short enough that Goujun couldn't call him out on it. "There's been a mixup with my duffel. I'm assured that it's en route."

Goujun didn't quite believe him, but probably he wouldn't lie quite so blatantly as all that. "First time working in intelligence, I see."

"Yes, sir." There was definitely the sound of at least one bitten-back response in his voice, and Goujun was somewhat meanly satisfied by the effort it clearly took.

"I'm given to understand you're something of an….authority problem."

Kenren stared straight ahead, all military now, which left Goujun with the unmistakable impression that he was being, somehow, at this very moment, very impertinent in the privacy of his mind. "If that's what the authority says. Sir."

And that pause was definitely abandoning that privacy. "Hm." Goujun made a show of looking at the file, and then went directly for the jugular. "It says here that you slept with your last C.O.'s husband, and then beat him up. The C.O., that is. Not the husband."

Kenren managed that same non-vocalised sigh again, slouching a little more, which made his shirt gape open just a little more, to Goujun's annoyance. "He swung first."

Goujun raised an eyebrow. "Because, if I may hazard a guess, he caught you fornicating with his spouse, with whom I dare say he hadn't made arrangements to accommodate such a thing."

"Seems like he swung at the wrong guy then, doesn't it?" Which left Goujun at something of a loss, since he didn't disagree.

"Hm. Well. You're going to be under substantially more scrutiny due to this and your ongoing issues with your superiors. We're fighting a war, and I expect better behaviour from you in the future."

Kenren's gaze remained fixed on the wall a precise six inches above Goujun's head. "War's tough to miss, sir."

To his own horror, Goujun found himself tempted to chuckle. "I believe so, yes." Kenren continued to look at the apparently fascinating wall, and Goujun sighed a little. "My instructions are to deploy you as an individual agent to ferret out alien-body smuggling. One of the few consistent positives in your evaluations is your ability to infiltrate and extract information. Presumably, working alone will also put paid to your less desirable instincts."

Kenren looked at him for the first time, then, and it was oddly disconcerting to be the sole focus of his gaze. It was almost disturbingly direct, in a way that Goujun's lifetime of high society and low politics hadn't accustomed him to at all. "Bits have been going missing, then."

"In ways that suggest military collaboration, at the very least." The increased professionalism was, oddly, difficult to handle. The man had the sort of centred calm that Goujun was much more accustomed to seeing in pictures of large wildlife. "You'll be working out on the orbital mech assembly stations, to infiltrate the smuggling ring. There are serious concerns that attempts are being made by criminal elements to reverse-engineer some of the bioweapons the aliens carry and deploy."

Kenren considered that for a moment, clearly thinking, extrapolating, a speed and efficiency of thought in it that Goujun found himself reluctantly impressed by. "What are my intelligence vectors? Where they're going, who's taking them….involvement?"

Goujun nodded a little, pleased with his immediate reaction. "I've already given you access to a dossier with the information the last agent managed to collect before his cover was blown. Our best guess so far as to the eventual destination of most of the parts is science labs funded by….the criminal underworld, for lack of a better term."

Kenren's expression suggested that he could think of several better ones, without actually changing in any substantial way. "Thank you, sir. I'll start right away."

"You'll depart on Thursday evening's shuttle. Your dossier contains your first contact." Goujun paused, and added, a little reluctantly, "don't botch this. You're already in a world of trouble."

Kenren smiled at that, just a little curve of that oddly expressive mouth, but a world of wry amusement in it, giving him a little half-salute. "Thank you for the guidance, sir."

Goujun snorted softly, charmed despite himself. "Your current attitude is, in fact, visible to me."

"Yes, sir."

Goujun smiled at him, just a bit. "You're dismissed. Do try not to start any bar brawls on your two whole days of vacation."

Kenren saluted, somehow managing to convey a higher level of impertinence in it by making it _more_ crisp. "I never start them, sir, but I'll do my best for you."

Goujun sighed. "Endeavour also to not participate."


	3. Docking Maneuvers

**Docking Maneuvers**

It had been way too long since he was last out in the black alone. He had forgotten the deep silence of it, even the near-subsonic thrum of the ship's engines melting into non-sound. Kenren sat looking out the cockpit window at the fathomless darkness on the other side, the stars' odd illusion of proximity that he'd never really managed to get used to, and the infinite indifference of the places in between. The universe reminded him with every drawn breath, every blink, every beat of his heart, that all of this was ultimately nothing. All of them, all of the others, all of himself...none of it mattered at all. And so all of it did.

It had always given him comfort to reorient himself against the black. _Perspective._ Maybe that was it, he thought, pouring himself another drink. Maybe that was what was different. He felt a pang of regret that he'd never have a chance to explain it, now. Not to the one person he'd like to tell.

The kid was here with him, but he hardly counted, being both an alien and currently asleep. Ironically, it seemed like snoring was a universal constant. No, it was better to keep this to himself, even if the kid was a safe confidante, what with having just managed to master six whole human words, three of which were about food.

He sipped at the scotch, savouring the taste of the Old Earth single malt that he had liberated from an offshoot of the smuggling ring he'd been investigating. Earth and fire slid down his throat, and he looked at the pale amber liquid in his glass, remembering that he had planned to share this with Goujun when he got back (to him). Goujun would have listened, if he was there. Maybe he would eventually have understood that what was on the other side of that window was the answer Goujun had been searching for from the first time they had met. Maybe Kenren could have let him understand that, and it would have been all right.

He sipped again, and let his head fall back as he grabbed a smoke and lit up, wondering if that would have changed anything back then.

It was less than a week since Kenren had last been to Goujun's office (then for congratulations his success with capturing several smugglers and dismantling at least one ring without having his cover blown,) and now here he was again. He had no illusions about what today's conversation would be about: an official reprimand for the previous night's activities, which had included a bar, a wooden chair, and an asshole who had turned out to be a colonel with a whiny streak. Never one to hesitate before the executioner, he knocked on Goujun's door and waited for the invitation to enter.

He would have straightened his shoulders, but they were too sore (and he honestly just didn't give that much of a shit), just opening the door and going inside. He closed it behind himself because he knew this was going to be Unpleasant. Mostly, anyway. He kind of liked poking at the pretty Commander. "You summoned, sir?" He restrained himself from his usual manner, on account of being eyeballs deep in shit already.

Goujun looked him over with a deliberately assessing gaze and sighed, but nodded when Kenren closed the door. "I did. You've managed to get into trouble."

Well, sheep, lamb...all that. "I prefer to think trouble got around me, sir," Kenren answered evenly, and Goujun raised an eyebrow.

"Mm, and under the chair you were apparently wielding as a weapon. Or was it a bar stool?"

Staring at that spot above Goujun's head again, Kenren responded in that same blank, 'reporting' tone. "Chair, sir. Stools are terrible weapons. Not enough swing flexibility."

A small sound of what Kenren wanted to believe was amusement escaped Goujun, seemingly despite himself "I see you've done your research," he drawled, trying to cover the previous noise.

"...Some have research thrust upon them."

"Yes," Goujun answered dryly, "your experience certainly seems...kinetic." He sighed, and Kenren could almost have thought that he was unhappy about what he had to say next. It was...unexpected. "You realise that this puts me in the awkward position of taking away the bonus that payroll has literally not had time to deposit into your account yet."

Well, _fuck_. He could have used that to send a bit back home, maybe help ease things up a little. He slumped slightly, but otherwise didn't respond outwardly, his gaze still fixed. "I didn't until you told me." He should have, but couldn't quite manage to stop himself from adding tightly, "Seems like you could have kept that to yourself."

Goujun stood, putting himself on a level with Kenren, who made it a point never to sit down in a superior's office if he could help it. Kenren moved his gaze to a new spot just above Goujun's head to accommodate. "I don't particularly want to do it, as a matter of fact," the commander said, "so if you have any explanations or justifications, this is the moment to voice them."

That was...also unexpected. Kenren blinked and looked his commanding officer in the eye for only the second time since they met, though his voice didn't give an inch. "I didn't start it, sir. But you've made it clear that you're not prepared to believe that, so I don't much understand why you're making me say it."

Cool grey eyes narrowed on him, Goujun making some kind of assessment that Kenren couldn't quite pin down. "I am offering you the chance to tell me what the circumstances were. Regardless of your having finished the brawl, the report seems uncertain as to who started it."

Well, he never was able to see a length of rope without making a noose. Kenren pulled in a long, deep breath and answered wearily, "The guy whose back broke my chair. He heard about my transfer situation and decided to give me grief." He gave Goujun a rueful kind of smile that even he could feel was more like a grimace. "I offered to buy him a beer if he'd use it to close his mouth, and the rest is puffed-up-animal history."

Goujun arched an eyebrow. "Puffed-up-animal...?"

"You know, when they puff up to scare an enemy."

This amused sound was fall more ill-concealed, making Kenren wonder if his commander was familiar with the jackass in question. "I see," he said once he had recovered himself. "I'll have to remember that turn of phrase."

"It's useful in my experience." Kenren took a long breath, exhaling in a sigh and letting go of his defensiveness just a little bit "Look, I just wanted a quiet drunk. I wasn't even looking for company."

Goujun gave him a long look and then a little nod, and it seemed to Kenren like maybe Goujun believed him. Maybe this 'too exhausted to fight' thing was effective. Go figure. "In that light, a quarter of the bonus seems a sufficient penalty," Goujun declared with a sigh of his own. "You were exemplary while on the mission. I would have preferred not to dock your pay at all."

Somewhat gobsmacked, Kenren retreated into his more professional face with a nod past Goujun's head again. "Thank you, sir."

He was no longer sure what to make of this one.


	4. Orbit

**Orbit**

 _Folkways,_ Goujun thought to himself, annoyed. That was the word he'd been searching for. Five nights after the day they'd told him Kenren was wanted for assorted crimes against the state, he'd found himself unable to sleep until he'd found the term, sitting at his work desk and scrolling through a sociology textbook he hadn't accessed on his screen since he'd been in school. _Folkways,_ or at least there was a case to be made for it. He wondered what Kenren would have said to that. If he'd have laughed at Goujun for having to look it up, if he'd have given the definition that same narrow-eyed assessing look he turned on information files sometimes, before his mouth twisted in amusement. The thoughts had utterly failed to distract him from the fact that Kenren wasn't there to do any of those things, and he'd found himself changing the browsing pages without really thinking about it, clicking on autopilot until he found himself, somehow, at the authentication page for a credits transfer to a spaceline out to Aks and a half-filled-out application for leave with pay on the other browser. It had simply all felt so...dreamlike, as if he were making these decisions without thinking about them at all, but even after all of this thinking, he'd somehow arrived at exactly the same point, where he found himself packing a bag and boarding a ship and not even being a little bit bothered by his decision to follow Kenren. Because….well, because _Kenren_.

The bar was somehow exactly what he'd expected even if it was the first time he'd ever set foot in it. It was definitely dingy. Of the seven places on the military station where one could get intoxicating substances, this was _definitely_ the dingiest. Oh, there wasn't any dirt, and the bar adhered reasonably well to military standards of service and hygiene, but the dimly-lit seating area and the somehow spiritually shabby furniture meant the place had an indefinable air of...dinge. It was almost fascinating. Goujun, who'd grown up in the calculatedly impersonal beauty of diplomatic quarters or in the austere aestheticism of his family mansion on Earth during his parents' rare breaks from foreign postings, was certainly fascinated. It was an odd sort of place to make a haunt of, but it fit Kenren, who was currently nursing a bottle of something alcoholic by himself, close to the bar. He didn't look like someone spoiling for a fight, but then he never really did, in Goujun's experience, even when he was provoking people into useless fits of fury. Perhaps especially then. He simply looked….at ease, as if he fit right in with the comfortably worn-in furniture and the comfortably worn-out everything else. It left Goujun feeling even more obviously awkwardly out of place in the bar. Still, he was here to...validate a hypothesis, and perhaps become better acquainted with Kenren. He steeled himself for rejection and headed over to receive it.

It took a mortifyingly long moment - or at least it felt like it - before Kenren noticed him, an inquiring sort of tilt to his head that left Goujun uncomfortably aware of the grace in the line of his neck. "Good evening," Goujun ventured hopefully, relieved he was being acknowledged, at least. It would have been unspeakably awkward if he hadn't been. "May I share your booth for a while?"

Kenren's eyebrow arched even further, but he did gesture to the other side of the booth. "Be my guest." The title was notably absent, Goujun was relieved to hear. This wasn't official, and he didn't want it to seem that way, either.

"Thank you," he said, and took a seat in the booth, which was very comfortable, while still maintaining that air of exhausted amicability that pervaded the place. ". ….I hope I'm not intruding on any plans for the evening."

Kenren smirked and took another belt of the bourbon in his glass, gesturing to the bartender for another. "You're looking at my plans. What brings you? Drink?"

"Yes, I'd like that, thank you." Goujun looked around at the bar, then back at Kenren, who was observing him as if he were either interesting or edible. It was disconcerting, to say the least. "It's come to my attention that you may have something of a pattern, and I can't help wanting to validate my hypothesis."

Kenren snorted softly, raising his glass. "Yeah? What pattern's that?"

"Your usual day for getting into fights is your second day off."

Kenren did chuckle for that, low and pleased, which was a relief. Goujun had noticed the pattern after the third time, but he hadn't said anything thus far, since he wasn't sure how he'd take it. "I thought I might attempt to provide a tempering influence, perhaps," he added, a little recklessly.

Kenren laughed outright for that, his head tipping back, the sound free and easy, bright in the gloom of the bar. "Well, I guess you'll figure it out if you try," and there was still that laughter in his eyes when he looked at Goujun again. It was oddly pleasing.

"I meant on the others, of course," Goujun said, startled to find himself smiling.

Kenren snagged a glass from the bartender with impressive smoothness, and poured Goujun a generous glass of bourbon. "Sounds like a fun experiment." He nudged the glass closer, and raised his own, in a half-toast that Goujun joined in. "Here's hoping."

There was an oddly sincere edge to it that made Goujun give him a concerned look, but Kenren's face had settled back into easygoing inscrutability. Still, it left him with the thought, not for the first time, that "...you don't enjoy getting into fights, do you? Irrespective of whether you enjoy being in them."

"Mostly not, no." Kenren was frowning at his glass, clearly thinking about it. "Sometimes it just happens."

"How does it just happen?" Goujun asked, curiosity overcoming decorum.

"You mean when I want to get into the fight, or not?"

Goujun considered that carefully, not wanting to offend. "...in either case…?"

Kenren shrugged. "Well, when I don't want to, usually someone else gets something up their nose about my face, or something I did sometime before when they're tapping my shoulder and calling me out, and once they swing, I'm all in. When I want to start a fight, I'm usually not very far from someone happy to take me up on an invitation."

Goujun took in the information, struck by the odd formality of a process he'd considered entirely random and chaotic. "I see. So there's an...etiquette to it."

Kenren laughed again for that. "'Etiquette'? Not sure about that."

"A...form, then?"

"Huh? You mean like a script?"

"Something like that," Goujun said tentatively, some vague recollection of having heard something about that in university. "A way things go. Not quite classified as mores. ...and now I regret not taking more anthropology courses."

Kenren blinked at him, as if Goujun had suddenly started speaking a different language, and then laughed, quite helplessly, the glass cradled loosely in long, graceful fingers as he gestured with it a little. "Well, there is, I guess, but you probably weren't going to figure it out there."

Goujun took another sip of his drink, feeling slightly less awkward now that the joke seemed to have succeeded. "No, I don't suppose anyone would teach the anthropology of spontaneous bar brawls."

Kenren grinned at him, bright and quick. "There's a kind of ritual, I guess? I never thought about it, but all my stuff seems pretty much to go the same way."

Goujun nodded agreement, and looked curiously around the bar, at the men (and a few women) curled around their own drinks. He'd have been able to spot infiltrators or socialites, could have told Kenren who'd received dance training from seeing them descend a staircase, but this was a complete mystery to him. Much as Kenren himself was. "Who would start one, in here?"

Kenren looked around, and it took less than thirty seconds to settle on a person, a man in a booth whose neck looked about as long as his IQ was high. "That one," he said definitively. "He's got a dick problem you could see from planetside, and if he spots me it'll be a Thing."

Goujun shook his head, bemused. "I...see."

Kenren shrugged at that, still looking around the bar. "I pretty much got the number a long time ago. Helps, if I'm trying to avoid them." His body language was as easy as if he were naming shirt colours instead of potential assaulters, and Goujun could see it for himself, suddenly - the predator, the chameleon, why he'd been shifted to intelligence despite being trained for direct combat. It was unsettling, to say the least, to realise in such a concrete fashion exactly how dangerous the man really was.

"Your file does indicate an impressive ability to read people quickly." Pointedly, he added, "whether or not you subsequently avoid them."

Kenren smiled at him for that, that sense of a half-bared blade still in the flash of his teeth, sharp and promising and just a little inviting. "I got my uses."


	5. Back in Black

**Back in Black**

Day (?) twenty-three after he'd rescued the kid had seen Kenren back out in the black, alone and staring a new problem right in the face. Well, 'new' was pushing it a little bit, since it had been a good two weeks of information-gathering and otherwise ignoring it while he got to where he was going. That hadn't stopped it growing exponentially in urgency day by day during that time, though, and it had taken a flurry of proper activity once the kid (whose grasp of the language was outside of Kenren's ability to properly gauge, particularly if he decided to hide it) was out of his hands to get squared away so his former superior officer didn't wind up a smear on some shady station floor.

At first it had seemed like a situation that would resolve itself sooner than later, and Kenren had asked that Goujun be protected as far as possible without compromising anything important. Naturally, the guy would get tired of looking in all the wrong places, and he would go back home before his career wound up in the toilet. That was the logical end point of the uncharacteristic actions of a professional military man, after all. It sucked, and Kenren fucking hated having to leave Goujun hanging like that, but he didn't really have any choice. Every new comm about his ex-commander's refusal to be logical and reasonable, to just let Kenren go and return to his post, stuck another needle into Kenren's gut and left him thinking too much.

That could make a body crazy, out in the dark solitary confinement of space, and he had been there for three months, now.

The first reports had come through even before Kenren and his cargo had reached their destination: some super-pale guy was asking around about him. Something about an old gambling debt or something. The terrible cover didn't matter except in that it made him even more more conspicuous, and in a way that meant he might just pick up attention from some seriously wrong people who may or may not want to Send Messages at Kenren. As if Goujun wasn't noticeable enough with looks like that.

He wondered if it was too uncharitable to imagine that he might be that obvious on purpose in hopes that Kenren would come rescue him out of sheer annoyance or fear for his safety? Possibly. Probably, if he was being fair. It put Kenren at too high a risk, and it had been a long time since he had stopped expecting Goujun to hang him out to dry. The guy had been willing to go to the wall for fraternising with a subordinate in order to keep him safe, after all. Even before there was any real fraternising going on, and even if Kenren's reputation would have mostly protected him.

It was the second night of Kenren's 'leave' (he was doing this whole thing backwards, after all, so coming to what could vaguely be described as his home was, in fact, leaving), so he wasn't at all surprised to look up to find Goujun standing at the end of his booth. Nearly a dozen times in, it had become something of a ritual. As had full salary deposits, so he wasn't complaining - about that, or, frankly, about the company. Other nights, he might be looking for something else, but second nights were reserved for his uniquely pretty superior. He wasn't complaining about that, either, for all its propriety.

"I thought I thought I'd come by and keep you from terrible life choices again," Goujun said as he slipped into the other side of the booth, more for the sake of tradition than enlightenment. He didn't ask, and he didn't need to. Kenren was right about finished with chasing himself around his own head, anyway. It was getting time to make a decision regarding a few lines, his neck, and the proximity of the latter to the former.

He leaned back, slouching comfortably with his beer because like fuck he was going to go saluting anyone in this dive, and favoured his commander with a smirk. "Only terrible choice I see is you keeping on coming back here."

Goujun gave a theatrically small sigh. "The decor _is_ deplorable."

"So's the company, I hear."

A little smile hovered at the corners of Goujun's mouth as he replied, "Entirely. Terribly unruly men."

Kenren clicked his tongue and took a swig of his beer. "So, just what you're looking for, then." Well. He probably shouldn't have done that. He could always blame the beer, as long as Goujun didn't know exactly how long he'd been here. Which he probably did. Anyway, Goujun was flushing a little bit, so he figured it was probably okay.

"Well," Goujun started, "I."

Now that was an interesting reaction. Kenren's body perked up at it regardless of his better instincts, because it tended not to consult him on the intelligence of any given attraction. He chuckled, low and warm, and waved to the server. "Let me buy you a drink."

"I see you're putting your latest - undiminished - salary to good use," Goujun said, obviously pleased.

"Got to thank the guy responsible for my first full pays in…" he paused to think about that, "...probably since I joined up, actually."

"How do you _manage_ that?" Goujun asked, utter bewilderment in his expression. "Even you don't get into that many fights."

Kenren shrugged at that, not wanting to get into the punitive edge on most of that stuff because of personal grudges. Goujun didn't need to know that, and Kenren wasn't real interested in listening to himself whine, in any case. "Sometimes shit gets really comprehensive," he offered, hoping to leave it at that.

"You're not that difficult to handle," Goujun pressed, and Kenren sighed, giving him a 'what can you do' kind of look.

"Anyway, it's good to be able to breathe a little bit," he offered, switching tacks. "I even got some debts dealt with."

"Debts? I didn't take you for the gambling sort."

Kenren gave him a long look for that, because of course Goujun would assume gambling. People from his tier of life rarely got into real debt without it or something equally disruptive, like drugs. Quietly, with an edge, he answered, "I'm not."

There was a brief but intense struggle in Goujun's expression that probably meant he had heard the discouraging intent, and was trying to apply it to his curiosity. Discretion won out. "No. I didn't think you made that sort of bad decision."

He couldn't help the smirk, a thousand voices in his head reminding him of ten thousand rebukes over his lack of self-control in other areas. "Nope. Not that kind."

That seemed to amuse Goujun, pulling a smile from him. "Just other kinds?" Kenren didn't bother answering that one, just holding Goujun's gaze steadily while he took a drink. "Incorrigible," Goujun muttered.

"Yeah, heard that before." In that moment, Kenren made his decision. He couldn't keep what he knew to himself, especially given his mission. Someone needed to know in case anything happened to him, and to the best of his knowledge Goujun was good. He had been looking over the past couple of years, and found nothing to tell him otherwise. Of course, that didn't make the dingiest bar on the station a good place to talk about it. Neither was Goujun's office; Kenren couldn't tell how deep this ran, and he couldn't control that space.

Fuck knew he didn't have anyone else.

A sort of quiet settled on the moment as Goujun watched Kenren watching him. "But not," Goujun said softly, "actually undisciplined." It was the first time Kenren could remember someone not Tenpou ever making that distinction at him.

Also quietly, the words more teasing than the tone, he said, "You take that back."

A crease appeared between Goujun's brows, uncertainty in his voice "Would you prefer if I did?"

Ah, Goujun, flattener of jokes. Not that that one had had a lot of topography in the first place, but still. Kenren made another decision, leaning in to say, "Maybe we should talk about that somewhere else."

"Excuse me?"That little flush reappeared in Goujun's cheeks, his skin just too pale to hide it even little bit, oddly pleasing if utterly misplaced in the moment.

"I think," Kenren answered, "we need to have a talk. Somewhere private."

The blush intensified, Goujun dropping his gaze, looking embarrassed. "All right." Goujun stood, placing a few credits on the table and turning away a little bit. "Now, then?"

Kenren felt like an ass. All this time he'd been waiting for the guy to pick up on the flirt, and now he had, and Kenren was headed for something else entirely. _Fuck_. Well, he could fix that, probably, but the mission had to come first. He drained his glass and stood, too, nodding. "Yeah. Come on, let's go."

Goujun frowned all over again. "Where were you thinking?" He had a point, without knowing what they needed to discuss, and Kenren's shoulders crept upward.

"...My quarters."

That got him one very wide, very intense blink before Goujun got whatever that thought was under control. He managed to sound impressively even when he answered, "I see."

Nodding for that, Kenren started out, leading the way. He wasn't sure what to do about that moment back there. It obviously had to take a backseat, but it wasn't exactly like Kenren hadn't been signalling interest in his intriguingly pretty boss for a long while, now. He just hadn't ever - and still didn't, really - expected reciprocation.

For the sake of completeness, Kenren took them a roundabout route to his quarters, using less-travelled corridors to get there. He opened the door and stepped inside, then turned to motion Goujun to silence while he pulled a small device from his pocket to check for bugs. It wasn't perfect, but neither was the military, so he figured it balanced out in the end. Once he got the all clear, he tucked it back into his pocket and said, "This is the only place I know is safe."

There was another quick exchange of expressions as Goujun settled on a way to take the fact that Kenren had just slighted Goujun's own office for probably very real intrusions. After a moment he nodded tightly, accepting it with reluctant grace. "All right," he said, slipping into work mode, "Report."

Relieved by the shift in gears, Kenren nodded and gestured Goujun to sit in one of the two small chairs at the equally small table that made up a third of the furnishings in Kenren's quarters. He took the other for himself, starting right in because he needed to get it settled. "All right," he began, leaning on the table, "I've been sitting on some information for a while, because I didn't have any actual proof of it, but I can't really get closer at this point. And I need backup, obviously. I can't seem to find the end of the smuggling, because a) it's definitely got support on the inside, and b) they want to escalate the war. We know they're looking to create weapons, but this is...bigger. I've heard that they've found a...a _pilot_ of some kind. You know that "structure" they're always going on about? The one they keep finding buried under the cervical spine?"

Steady as he usually was, Goujun was never slow on the uptake. "They found a pilot. There actually _are_ pilots in the aliens, then."

Kenren made a little equivocating gesture with his head. "Remember, I got no real proof of this, except that suddenly an entire sector got quarantined over at the _Hyperion_ , right after the battle in Forty-Three, and a special platoon landed there to patrol it. Then eighteen hours later everyone was gone like nothing happened. What I heard was this thing turned out to be humanoid, or something like, but all fucked up. Alive, but just barely, and basically vegetative."

Goujun's breath caught hard as he listened, and Kenren could see him chasing down the possibilities and making the extrapolations. Kenren had already been down that road. If there was a pilot, conclusively, then that meant there was a possibility of better bioweapons. or even a hostage exchange. Not that the other side had been very interested in taking prisoners, but there were other things to trade for, potentially. Quietly, Goujun asked, "I know you don't have proof, but how _certain_ are you?"

"Pretty fucking certain. I've been told that the thing's kind of...melted. Like it was being digested or something."

Goujun shuddered for the description, and Kenren couldn't blame him. "Well," he sighed, "that's...still useful. Any idea whose hands it's in, now?"

Kenren shook his head. "Not yet, no. It was too soon before I left to come back here. I'll have to look into it more when I go back," he paused, looking Goujun in the eye, "but you're the only person I trust with this."

Goujun returned the gaze evenly, steadily, and Kenren took that as agreement. "It's best not to spread it around just yet, yes. I'll make a note of it in case this station is attacked, but this goes no farther than myself for the moment." It was his turn to pause, offering awkwardly, "Thank you for your trust in me." Which, since Kenren was technically required to report everything to Goujun as his superior officer, acknowledged the trust that Kenren placed in him, and the deliberation with which he did it.

He nodded. "You've earned it. Don't make me regret it." Kenren straightened up and looked around. "We'll have to meet here when I'm back. It's the only place small enough that I can keep it safe."

Goujun looked around the place, too, and Kenren wondered what he was thinking as his gaze fell on one and then another place in the carefully spartan room. "Yes. I apologise. I know you're a private person."

"Nothing here you can't see," Kenren shrugged. "Someone's bound to notice eventually, though."

There was a slightly uncomfortable kind of sound from Goujun. "I'll do my best to be discreet."

Kenren heard that, and he grinned. "If anyone asks, you can just tell them we're fucking. That should end it."

The blush this time was both instantaneous and intense. "I- I beg your par- ...you're not serious."

Still grinning, Kenren teased, "Sure, why not? I mean, you're pretty. I wouldn't mind."

Instantly and evidently intensely offended, Goujun snapped back, "I am not _pretty._ "

"All right," Kenren held up his hands, chuckling, "all right, I take it back. You're absolutely a troll."

Goujun huffed. "That wasn't what I..." He sighed. "I see you're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"...being... _you._ "

Kenren nodded, not even trying not to let his amusement show. "Yeah, that's pretty much my jam."

"You take an inordinate delight in flustering people."

"Hey, it's not my fault you get offended at being called hot."

Goujun frowned. "I wasn't offended." Seemed to consider that for a second, then added, "At the...sentiment, that is."

Oh, Kenren had him, then, he could feel it. At the very least, he'd entered the realm of the haveable. "Sounded like it to me," he said, and smirked.

"It was the choice of words," Goujun defended himself, stiffly.

"Ah, okay, I got it. Not chest-thump enough, huh?"

"I've never thumped my chest in my life."

"Until now." Fuck, Kenren couldn't remember when he'd last had this much fun.

Trying to cover what looked an awful lot like amusement, Goujun cleared his throat. "I don't recall any such gorilla-esque behaviour."

Arching an eyebrow, Kenren pointed out, "Sure got pissed when I used a word you think of as feminine."

Goujun opened his mouth to protest, and Kenren just stared sharply at him until he closed it a little and admitted, "...you may have a point."

Kenren couldn't help grinning again. "It ain't less hot."

He actively watched Goujun break down in the face of that, smiling back at Kenren and shaking his head. "Utterly unruly."


	6. Collision Course

**Collision Course**

Space waystations, Goujun was dismayed to note, were apparently uniformly foul-smelling. He knew the reasons, intellectually - water was at a premium on spaceships, and wipe-cleans inevitably smelled like some variation on unpleasantly synthetic cologne, unpleasantly synthetic perfume, or unpleasantly synthetic baby powder. Add the ever-present metal-oil reek of the mech assembly stations and those who worked on them, the sweaty frustration and fatigue of long-haul travellers, most of whom were currently refugees from the front, and the over-perfumed planet-hoppers who needed everyone to know they weren't like the sweaty, tired long-haul travellers, and Goujun's nose was even more heartily tired of this pointless quest than the rest of him. Four space stations, two planets, a moon and three asteroids into his chase, his bank balance was even more depressingly depleted than his list of potential contacts, and no one, not a single one, would tell him anything about Kenren. He'd encountered one woman on Corinth, in fact, who'd threatened to beat his ass, despite being half his size and violently he'd pointed that out, she'd said she'd use her oxygen tank to beat him, then, if he wanted to do any harm to 'that sweet boy'.

The worst of it was that he hadn't expected anything else. Not really. He _knew_ Kenren's ability to inspire loyalty - it was, after all, why Goujun was now in line to buy a ticket to Parnassus, which (despite its name) everyone knew to be one of the most famously miserable asteroids in the galaxy - and he knew Kenren's abilities better than most. Not to mention his motivation. The sheer volume of trumped-up charges the military police had unloaded on Kenren - including, but not limited to, desertion, attacking a superior officer, destruction of government property, theft of government resources, theft of classified information, theft of alien materials - left Goujun quite certain that going back was at least as terrible an option for Kenren as continuing to run. In fact, given the chaos of the war, the fact that the mechs were increasingly proving ineffective against alien attacks, and the loss of two of their best mining colonies in the last week meant that a deserter was the least of their worries. Or at least, he should have been. Goujun's military contacts had made it clear, however, that there was still an active manhunt out for Kenren, and on a scale that frankly baffled Goujun. And worried him. If he'd been able to track Kenren more successfully, he might have worried that he was accidentally leading them to him, but his search had been too completely disastrous for him to need to fear that. It was probably the most dismally gaunt silver lining he'd found in his life.

No, he hadn't hoped to be able to convince someone if they thought he was there to turn on Kenren, but he'd somehow hoped that they would...understand, perhaps. Somehow sense that he wasn't trying to endanger Kenren, that he wasn't going to cause him harm, and just _tell him_ what he needed to know, so he could meet Kenren again and-

And. Well. That was part of the problem, wasn't it? He had absolutely no idea what meeting Kenren would actually entail or accomplish. He didn't know what he was going to say to him, beyond asking him why in Earth's name he'd decided to up and vanish. Even that question wasn't exactly free of the baggage of Goujun's own...connection, and history, with Kenren. He didn't even really, if he felt like admitting it to himself, know what he was going to do once he'd found him. Largely because he didn't know what he was going to do about what he'd done before he'd lost him.

He hadn't intended to get drunk, exactly. It hadn't been a _plan_ when he'd bought the extra bottle of wine along with the scotch for Kenren; just more of a….possibility. He certainly hadn't intended to drink almost all of the bottle beforehand. It had simply seemed like a good idea, at the time, to have a glass of wine, perhaps, and consider whether or not he was violating the spirit, if not the letter, of some particularly niche law in taking a bottle of scotch to a subordinate's private quarters with the specific intent of getting mind-blowingly drunk and possibly discussing the further concealment of sensitive information from their superiors. Ultimately, though, he couldn't bring himself to care. There had been an exhaustion to Kenren's expression when he'd reported in this afternoon that had caught Goujun's attention, tension at the corners of his mouth and none of that usual gentle humour in his gaze, fatigue in the line of his shoulders. He hadn't seen him look like that before. Kenren, he'd learned, was someone who used outrage as fuel, who only shone brighter in his fury at the brokenness of the world, but this….he'd simply looked weary, today, drained, and it had hurt, in some indefinable way, to see it. So here he was, pre-empting Kenren's inevitable seeking out of a good drunk or a good fight. And since when had he known so well that that would be what he headed for?

Kenren's expression, when he opened the door to Goujun's tentative knock, suggested that Goujun's instincts had been entirely correct. He wasn't quite as tired-looking as he had been when he'd just reported in, but it was still lingering in the lines of his face, somewhere, that bleakness that felt so entirely wrong it screamed in Goujun's senses. He was also, to Goujun's surprise, shirtless, a pair of sweatpants clinging precariously low on remarkably shapely hips, before Goujun tore his gaze away from it and returned it to Kenren's face, registering that he'd in fact said "bit early, aren't you?"

"Ah, I beg your pardon." It was really quite difficult to tear his gaze from Kenren's chest, which was much more hairless than he'd suspected, but every bit as defined. "I simply felt this might be a quieter place to drink than the bar, since you seemed somewhat exhausted earlier."

Kenren flashed him a quick grin, not as bright as his usual ones, but relieved, nonetheless. "Sounds perfect. Come on in." He turned away to go put on a shirt, which left Goujun with an excellent view of his back instead. "You know where the glasses are, right?"

"Of course," Goujun responded, on autopilot, heading for the tiny cabinet where Kenren stored those things. The quarters were cramped at best, and the scent of his soap was everywhere. He must have just showered. The man really was distraction incarnate.

By the time he made himself turn back and sit down, Kenren was already studying the bottle of scotch, a low sound of appreciation for it, giving Goujun a lazy, genuine grin, one eye closed against his smoke. "You're getting sharp."

There was no reason for the compliment to burrow under his skin like that, spark warm and comforting against his belly, but it did. "Am I? I hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, you caught me before I could get out in public." Kenren's voice was light and his hand was steady as he poured each of them a generous amount of scotch, and months earlier, Goujun wouldn't have noticed the strain in him - or his clear pleasure at Goujun's noticing it, for that matter. "It was never going to be pretty, tonight."

Goujun nodded, privately pleased he'd read it right. "It seemed that way from your expression." He studied Kenren, careful, trying not to stare too overtly. "Are you all right?"

Kenren sighed, scrubbing distractedly at his hair with one large hand. "Tell you the truth, I don't know. Being out there makes it hard to be hopeful about any of this shit. They're all gung-ho and just fucking spoiling. And coming from me, that's saying something."

"It's wearing on you more and more. Even I can see it." The words were a risk - if Goujun knew anything about Kenren by now, it was that he was surprisingly private for being so gregarious - but it didn't misfire, luckily enough.

"I'll manage, though. Might need a bigger break soon." Kenren exhaled a cloud of smoke, drank, looking a little more comfortable already for the routine. "Blow off some steam."

"I'll do my best to arrange it speedily," Goujun offered quietly. "You've more than earned the time off. It's simply that things have been...tumultuous, lately."

Kenren shook his head. "At the end of the next run, earliest. I've got some promising leads, but they're tender, yet. Going to need some time to tease them out."

"Any further information on what the smugglers are aiming to acquire from the battleground around Station VII?"

"Military's looking for spinal-involved, but there's a soft inquiry about something that looks like the gallbladder in humans. The usual bullshit about the other bits for snake oils...but the gallbladder thing looks a bit weird."

Goujun nodded and tucked the information away, took a sip of scotch, the alcohol burning pleasantly down his throat and settling comfortably on top of the wine. It was a little difficult to focus, with the alcohol and Kenren so recently shirtless and now very proximate, and it was getting more and more difficult to talk himself out of staring at Kenren's collarbone, which was still bare to his sight and looking offensively edible. "Gallbladders," he said, in the tones of one who'd definitely been musing exclusively on the possibilities of smuggling body parts from alien creatures the size of large spaceships. "That is strange, particularly when…I thought much of the research was on reverse-engineering toxins or bioweapons."

Kenren frowned, looking like someone who had actually been thinking about the problem at hand. "Only thing I can think is forward-engineering an effective acid, and a resistance for our mechs."

"I'm no scientist," said Goujun, who was currently feeling like no military man, either, "but it seems logical." He sighed, and added, a touch irritably, "Is a bit of patriotism too much to ask for, at times like these?"

Kenren gave him a sharp look, which reminded Goujun of the fact that the smugglers were as likely to be supplying independent militiae who were also fighting the aliens as they were septuagenarians who thought ground-up alien parts would send their wives into swooning ecstasy. "Patriotism, huh? Seems to me like that bunch's got way too much."

"Perspective, then," Goujun accepted. " _Why_ can't anyone have a proper balance of both?"

Kenren hunched over his drink, that haunted look slipping back over his face, just enough that Goujun couldn't help but notice, and he was watching Goujun with an odd sort of intensity. "You fucking got me."

Goujun shrugged a little, giving him a tentative smile. "Sometimes I feel you're the only sane person I know."

"'S 'cause you're pretty much right," Kenren shot back immediately.

Goujun laughed a little, for the speed of the response, and the rightness of it - and when had it become such a truth? "I should go back in time and tell myself that."

Kenren grinned at him, bright and sharp and entirely too inviting. "Yeah? How far back?"

Goujun smiled back, taking a generous gulp of the scotch, basking in the lingering burn of it, so different from the wine he'd already had. "Perhaps to when I was reading your file."

Kenren chuckled. "What, and miss having gotten off on such a good foot?"

Goujun laughed, too, leaning in a little closer, feeling Kenren's cologne burn through his senses in much the same way his scotch had, sparking in his belly with aching want. "Is that what we got off on?"

Kenren grinned, slow and warm, his gaze lingering on Goujun, a restrained sort of heat to it, and perhaps it was the effect or the wine, or the scotch he hadn't had nearly enough of, but he couldn't help the start of awareness in his spine, trickling bright sparks along to his mouth. "Close enough for official company."

"Is that so?" Goujun smiled at him, entirely helplessly. He'd never smiled so much in his life, before Kenren.

Kenren clicked his tongue, still giving him that slow grin that made Goujun think of a thousand things he could do to provoke that grin, or with that mouth, in general. "Better be."

The space between them had never seemed so simultaneously insignificant and so tight with electric potential, and Goujun found he had to steady his hand before he could take another drink. Finishing the tumbler seemed only right, even if he knew he was drinking too fast, reckless. "Are we in official company right now, do you think?"

"You tell me," Kenren said, pouring him more, the movement as deliberate as the way he paused before adding, "Sir."

That pause - it was invitation, tease and taunt, it was a challenge if Goujun wanted to take it, and at this moment, he couldn't imagine refusing, couldn't imagine how to, gathering his courage quickly and reaching for him. The skin was startlingly soft on the back of Kenren's neck, smooth and warm and utterly inviting, and it seemed only natural, only right to pull him in, slow enough he could have resisted, dizzying relief that he didn't. And then Kenren's mouth was on his, a hint of a smile and the taste of scotch and smoke and oh, he was responding, clearly pleased, clearly willing, and how long had he been waiting? How long had Goujun been waiting? But it didn't matter, because here they were, here _Kenren_ was, kissing him back and shifting closer and licking at his mouth with that entirely too clever tongue. Goujun gave in to himself as much as to Kenren, opening his mouth to him and pulling him closer, holding that pretty neck tighter, losing himself in the taste and feel of him. "Guess that's a 'no', then," Kenren murmured against his mouth.

Goujun could feel and hear the smile even more keenly like this, that warm amusement that always sparked in those bright eyes, and he had to kiss him again for it, pulling him close, Kenren's body pressed against his, a long moment before he realised he'd actually said something that needed responding to. "Hm?" he said distractedly, gaze still fixed on his mouth. "Yes. No." One of those was bound to be the right answer, he thought vaguely, and this way, he could kiss him again, wind his hands into the intimacy of still-damp hair, let Kenren nip at his lip, lick heat all down his spine with that skilled mouth of his…

Kenren chuckled against his mouth for that, tugging his hair gently to get his attention, pulling back and away. "Okay?" he said, and there was a quiet warmth in his voice, concern colouring it, sending shivers of pleasure through Goujun, even as it warmed his heart.

He was checking in on Goujun, as if he were the one who needed it, and he couldn't help but smile for it, stroking Kenren's hair, liking the way he purred encouragement for the touch. "You're oddly chivalrous." He tugged him closer, standing up so he could hold him and feel him, press against him and feed his own hunger even as he sated it.

Kenren moved with him easily, grinning a little, though he still kept away just enough to speak. "Well, I've got to make sure I don't get anyone hurt, so….did you have anything to drink before you came here?"

Goujun blinked at him, startled by the care, the fact of it as much as its implications, the part of him that had such dangerous things as hope and desire aching for it, the sensation of something opening up under him, dangerous possibilities. "It was just a bit of wine. I'm _fine_. I want you." The words fell from him as easily as if he'd been thinking about saying them forever, as if he'd been wanting them for years and had simply found the right place to put them down, as if they weren't shocking him on the way out, as if he were simply in the habit of asking for what he wanted.

Kenren shook his head a little, though he didn't move away, didn't resist Goujun's touch, the tentative slide of his fingers down the curve of his spine. If anything, he moved into it, an almost-unconscious little arch that pressed him against Goujun's body, sent lightning through him. "Not my ass in a sling, if we get caught. Mostly."

The remark startled Goujun into laughter, his thumb smoothing over Kenren's neck, affection and wonder and...fondness, almost - fondness with teeth, perhaps - and he hadn't known he could feel like this, this quiet contentment wrapped around aching desire, so caught in the press of Kenren's body to his, the touch of his mouth, the care in his cautioning Goujun, even when he could clearly feel the desire restrained in his body."I think we can manage to make discretion work."

Kenren relaxed perceptibly for that, a loosening of his body that Goujun only noticed when it went away. "Integrity," he breathed, and kissed Goujun so fiercely his thoughts scattered before he could even begin to frame a question about it. Not that he cared, not at all, with Kenren here, in his arms, finally his, if only for a little while, and he couldn't stop himself from pushing back harder, holding him tight and pushing for control, wanting to feel him, take him. Kenren fell back after a moment, letting Goujun have him, just like he wanted, needed, a low moan of appreciation in that voice that was exactly how he'd imagined Kenren would sound, rough and pleased, like something only half-tamed and never to be held entirely.

It was, he discovered, something like an attempt to hold liquid lightning in his bare hands. Kenren was ridiculously limber, wrapping his leg around Goujun's hip and arching against him in a smooth filthy movement when Goujun pinned him to the wall, shocking pleasure down his spine and over his skin, bright sparks of sensation from each little bite he left as he nibbled down Goujun's neck, and oh, gods, undid his collar button with his _teeth_ , as if that was something people even _did_ , leaving Goujun a trembling mess before he had even so much as got his hands on Kenren properly. Everything about him was electric, swift precise movement and sinuous grace, rocking against Goujun until he was half mindless with need, sliding his hand into Goujun's pants before he'd even really noticed he was moving, touching, stroking, teasing, maddening him. It felt like retaliation as much as desire to do the same, to curl his hand around Kenren's gratifyingly hard cock, but he didn't respond as if it was, writhed fluidly against him and into his grip instead, licking at the rim of Goujun's ear and murmuring filthy promises on hot breath against wet skin, as if he weren't already breaking Goujun apart with pleasure from what he was already doing. He slipped to his knees as if Goujun hadn't been restraining him at all, breaking the illusion long enough to trail his tongue along Goujun's cock through his pants, so he barely noticed Kenren pulling them off him, caught entirely in the wet-hot slip of his tongue, the promise of that lovely mouth, rocking forward in pure instinct and rewarded by a moan from Kenren that was half surprise, half delight, all pleasure, the tight heat of his mouth around him, Kenren's hair thick and soft in his hand. He was both pliant and oddly, completely, out of Goujun's control, sucking him and taking him apart with it, and all with that warm laughter in his eyes, affection curled around desire and making it his own, making _Goujun-_

But that was just wishful thinking; he knew Kenren and his penchant for one-night stands, after all, and this was probably all he'd have, but by fuck, he'd have it, have all of him. Not that Kenren minded, by the way he squirmed back against Goujun eagerly when he pushed him to the bed and pinned him there with his body, the soft chuckle that melted into a moan when Goujun pressed slick fingers to his entrance, pushed his way into wet, willing heat, the catch of his breath and the quicker rhythm of it, the way he bent himself to stretch out a leg and hook an ankle over Goujun's shoulder and dragged him in, insistent and filthy, every bit as eager as Goujun himself was. It was intoxicating, feeling him bend to Goujun's control and give himself over to his demands so easily, pain and pleasure catching at the edges of his moans, as easily entwined as if he sought them both, and of course, Goujun thought, somewhat dazedly, curling his fingers to make him cry out, pinning him in that same aching demand to have some part of this man all for his own. Of course he did; of course Kenren, who lived so intensely, who laughed while fighting and smiled when in pain, would want all of it, all tangled together, like life itself, summarised and consummated at once. He cried out when Goujun drove into him, clenched around him as if every muscle were hungry for him, fierce grin on his lips as he shredded Goujun's control and then his mind, driving him to mindless need and beyond, until everything was a blazing rush of sensation and the friction of their bodies, sparking electric up his spine and into his mouth and into his mind with the realisation that he'd never ever been in control here after all, a sharp cry tearing from him as he lost himself in him, in the delicious too-much of it all, and only Kenren there to catch him….


	7. Event Horizon

**Event Horizon**

He'd trailed Kenren what seemed like halfway across the Galaxy by this point, following one lead after another and burning through an impressive amount of fuel, spatial distance, military SpaceParMiles points, and paid time off in the process. What he had to show for it was...yet another contact, actually, pointing him in the direction of yet another remote outpost, with the sort of confidence that means either that she was reasonably certain or that she was lying her head off. It said something that his reaction to receiving a clear hint at this point was to be immediately suspicious that it was a red herring, but Kenren's contacts were turning out to be insanely loyal, and it was certainly good to know that he could inspire that in people. It made Goujun feel like less of a fool, or at least less alone in acting like one. So there he was, sitting on a folding cot that was (aside from the also-folding chair and desk) the only piece of furniture in his ambitiously-named "hotel room" on the ocean floor of a mining outpost on Seleum, waiting for the contact that the contact had promised and, hopefully, waiting to see Kenren.

Goujun looked up sharply at the knock on the door, but it...was the wrong knock. He sighed, shaking his head and standing up, heading for the door. There was no peep-hole, no screen, no way of telling who was on the other side but to open it. When he did, he found a startlingly tall man on the other side. After a fruitlessly expectant moment Goujun ventured slowly, "Yes...?"

The tall man regarded him somewhat suspiciously, then looked both ways down the hall before he leaned down, and Goujun caught sight of the device in his hand just as he pushed a button on it. One second of pure panic, and then white noise enveloped them as the tall man spoke low in his ear, "You are Goujun?"

Goujun nodded, frowning. "I am, yes." He held out his wrist n an offer to scan his military bracelet for confirmation, but the tall man looked at it like he'd never seen one before, so dropped it again. "And you are?"

The man shook his head. "I have been sent to give you this." He held out a small, folded piece of paper. "And to tell you to follow it exactly. Do not go where you're not invited. Be careful." He pressed the paper into Goujun's hand. He released the button and the covering noise died as he turned, already leaving before Goujun could begin to ask him anything else.

Bemused, Goujun stared down at the paper for a long moment before retreating into his room with it. No one had proactively contacted him before now, save that one woman who had told him to fuck off if he ever expected her to rat Kenren out (which was appreciated, if wholly misguided). That seemed like a good sign. Maybe. He carefully unfolded the paper, his breath catching in his chest as he studied the instructions written on it. He sighed as he moved to get his jacket and his room key. This was going to take a while.

Two hours and three disreputable establishments later, Goujun stood in front of the unassuming door of the specific address that had come attached to the very particular - and particularly expensive - bottle of brandy he had been instructed to purchase. Knocking on the door eventually produced a very small, very old woman (why were so many of Kenren's contacts tiny old ladies?) who led him to a large back room with no windows, sparsely furnished with a single table and two chairs. Well, that second chair was encouraging. Or possibly he'd just been so worn down by this chase that he was starting to delude himself. He put the brandy down on the table next to the ashtray (another good sign) and settled in to wait.

Kenren looked up when Idora's voice crackled over the intercom in the wall of the room to tell him that his supper was ready. Which, of course, was code for 'the idiot soldier who won't stop chasing you has finally turned up'. He stood, repressing the odd fluttering in his stomach and the suddenly weirdly strong need to see the idiot soldier's face as he stepped out and headed down the close halls to the drop tube that would take him down to the 'holding' room where Idora had left Goujun to wait.

At the bottom of the ladder, Kenren pressed a button to open a concealed panel in the wall and took a step out, ready to duck. Goujun whirled on him, eyes wide and bright, weapon drawn, but there was no fucking way in hell Goujun would ever even accidentally shoot him, and Kenren had a point to make. He strode past as Goujun moved to lower his weapon and spoke in a low, wary voice. "Kenren."

Kenren had been thinking about how this was going to go as he waited for Goujun to jump through his hoops. A thousand scenarios had tripped through his mind over the day, but now he knew exactly what he had to do. Kenren felt his body loosening a little as he turned to face his former handler. "What the fuck are you doing here, Goujun?"

It took a moment for several reactions to pass visibly over Goujun's face as he made his way, finally, to one Kenren knew very well, indeed. "Tracking down an officer who's absent from duty without leave, apparently."

"Looking to get your ass handed to you in thirty-eight pieces, is what it looks like from here," Kenren shot back, ignoring Goujun's fury; he wasn't Kenren's C.O. anymore, after all. Out here, he was just another guy with worry carving itself into the lines around his mouth and eyes, tired and older-looking even in the five months or so since they'd last seen each other. Maybe he should have sent a message, somehow. It wasn't like there weren't people who did that kind of thing, and certainly not like Kenren didn't know of about eight of them off the top of his head. But then, it hadn't been sending he'd needed to be concerned about, he reminded himself. It was the reception that was the problem, and he couldn't - _couldn't_ \- take the chance that he would compromise Goujun's position or career...or safety.

Goujun bristled visibly for that. "I rather think you have the two of us confused, Kenren."

Shaking his head, Kenren barked a laugh. " Do you have _any_ fucking idea where you are? I've been here before. You're putting your neck pretty fucking literally on the line, chasing me. You need to back off, Goujun. Go home." Seriously, the guy had to have figured out how dangerous a place like this was, out on the edge of anything anyone cared about, an old mining colony past its prime and now under the control of forces that could most politely be described as 'shadowy'. Kenren was vaguely surprised that the place hadn't just physically rejected the upright Goujun when he tried to land, actually.

There was somehow even more bristling from Goujun as he holstered his weapon, and he snapped back, " I do have a fucking idea where I am, thank you. And I'm exquisitely aware of the fact that I have gone to no small lengths to track you down. Would you mind explaining exactly what you're thinking, running away from an active mission?"

Kenren took a moment to be impressed at Goujun's uncharacteristic language, then laughed again. "Wasted effort, if this is the best you can do." He didn't want to answer that last question, because he would have to either lie to Goujun or tell him the truth, neither of which appealed to him. There was only one way to keep Goujun safe, and he'd been trying to do that. It would have been a lot easier if the fucker could manage to restrain himself. But here he was, months after Kenren had disappeared on him, tired and obviously worn thin, looking at Kenren with barely disguised relief in every line of his body. Kenren crushed a sudden desire to reach out to touch him, to remind himself of the texture of that pale skin; he wanted to, but he couldn't weaken. Not now.

"Answer the question, or I'll be forced to attempt to apprehend you, which - since I don't think you did what they said you did - would be entirely counterproductive on your part."

Kenren could hear the razor-edge in his own voice as he answered quietly, "You can try. _Sir._ "

A deep sound that Kenren would nearly classify as a growl slid from Goujun for that, familiar and tempting. "We both know you want to tell me, or you wouldn't have reached out proactively."

He wasn't wrong, and Kenren wasn't interested in pretending that he was, so he moved past, asking instead of answering, "So you know you weren't actually tailing me, then."

Goujun heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I know your skills of evasion are objectively greater than mine at tracking, yes."

For Goujun's sake, Kenren tried not to look too pleased at that admission, but failed, a lopsided little grin tugging at his mouth. "Good, so then you also know that when I leave here, keeping on with it is just going to get you killed. I can't keep protecting you forever."

Kenren could have sworn he actually heard Goujun's control snap.

" _Protecting_ me?"

"Fucking right, protecting you. You made it this far because I had eyes on you."

Narrowed grey eyes regarded Kenren coldly. "Explain," Goujun snapped, and it was Kenren's turn to bristle at the command even as he began speaking.

"You have this problem, Goujun, where you think everybody's going to come at you head-on. Battle, you understand. Out here, though...honourable combat'll get you diced. All those people you talked to about me? They're my people, and they were watching out for you because I told them to. Someone's had your back pretty much since you left the station. I got wind after you were on the _Artemis_. You had a shadow while you were on the _Odysseus_ , and ever since."

"And if that's true, that's still because you ran off without so much as a message as to why," Goujun fired back.

"Leaving without telling is the fucking point of running away, for fuck's sake."

Another little half-growl fell from Goujun as he fixed Kenren with a pointed glare. "And why did you decide to do that, exactly?"

"Because I pretty much like my head where it is, and my body unperforated."

"Going AWOL wouldn't seem to lower your chances of that," Goujun explained, and Kenren couldn't help but grin at it, bright and brittle as glass, though his voice was low and sharp.

" _Everything_ is lower than a hundred percent, and I'm still alive right now, aren't I?"

That seemed to get through to Goujun, and he stopped dead, antagonism draining away as it sank in. "You can't possibly be implying that the military would kill you."

Kenren's laugh was loud and hollow. "Who's fucking implying?"

One step closer, Goujun frowned at him, quieter, now, serious in the way Kenren knew from so many conversations and debriefings. "What did you mean by it, then?"

"I mean that if they catch me, they will make me disappear in the densest fucking way possible, never to be seen or heard from again."

Quietly, several things warring audibly in Goujun's voice, "And why wouldn't you have told me if you were in that much danger?"

Kenren shook his head, unable to believe that Goujun could ask him that. "Didn't you _just_ ask me, like I was crazy, if I could possibly think the military was going to kill me?" Kenren watched with something like horrified amusement as Goujun had the brass balls to look offended.

"I would take such a suggestion more seriously if it weren't being brought up four months after your disappearance, yes," he said sharply, "but I'm not _not_ listening now."

It never ceased to amaze Kenren, how much better than they really were Goujun expected everyone to be. Even himself. Certainly Kenren. And that was exactly the problem. "No, you wouldn't have," Kenren corrected, not ungently. "Not really. Problem with you, Goujun, is that you have integrity, and you expect everyone else to, too. But, see...you're the odd man out, there. I know without a shadow of a doubt that you'd fight to the death for me. I couldn't let you have to."

There was an automatic edge to Goujun's tone as he responded, "Of course I would, I-" He stopped, frowning weirdly slow at Kenren. "...you knew that."

"Of course I knew that!" Kenren snapped. "You spent three years teaching me to know that! What the fuck?"

Goujun threw up his hands - or tried to, since he was still gripping the bottle in one of them, huffing loudly at him. "If you didn't have a reputation for being stubborn and contrarian and disliking authority on principle, maybe I wouldn't be surprised!"

"Well," Kenren fired back, frustrated, "I guess I was the only one talking to a person instead of a fucking reputation _._ "

"You have complained about every _single_ person of your rank or higher of our mutual acquaintance, and at least two dozen others I've never so much as met, in the time I have known you!"

Kenren's voice returned to normal volume, but there was a hiss in it he couldn't quite disguise as he pointed out, "And not one of them is you." Goujun's mouth closed, his gaze softening, and there was a long moment of wounded, slightly confused silence between them before a soft, sheepish 'oh' sound fell from him. Kenren shook his head as he turned away. "You're the most upright son of a bitch I ever met, but I guess that doesn't extend this far. I won't make that mistake again." His chest tight, he headed for the door he came in by. He needed a smoke. And about thirty drinks, thanks. He should have known better.

He could hear shifting behind him, movement, and he was nearly at the door by the time Goujun managed to speak. "-wait! I want to understand. Please." Kenren stopped, because _that_ , he didn't expect. Not now. Not after all they'd just said. He turned around again, fixing Goujun with a long, cool look.

"You want _me_ to trust _you_."

"I do." Goujun bit the inside of his cheek, watching Kenren carefully. "I think you do. Or you'd never let me find you."

"I did," Kenren corrected flatly. "And you didn't find me."

Goujun took the correction calmly, barely a visible sign that it bothered him at all. "You led me to you. I'm not under the impression that I could have, otherwise."

It was clear that Goujun was going to keep either misunderstanding or just Not Hearing what Kenren was trying to tell him, there, but in the end, given how things were going, it was no more than an annoyance he'd replay a thousand times or so. Nothing to worry about. He waved it off.

"I know you would never abandon your mission," Goujun went on. "Or sell secrets, or destroy or steal government property, no matter what they told me. You're not that man." a note of urgency gilded Goujun's voice. "You're a good man."

Ah, fuck, that hurt. "Good men sometimes have to do things people don't like."

For once, Goujun held himself in check, restraining himself to one quiet question: "What did you do?"

"What did they tell you?" Kenren didn't exactly know that the story was, or had become, since he had take the kid they'd nicknamed Goku to Tenpou and Konzen. He didn't want to have to talk around things that didn't need it, and like fuck he was just going to trust Goujun with extra information at this point either. It was safer for both of them that way, he told himself, ignoring the lingering hurt.

Visibly relaxing a little bit when Kenren turned to fully face him again, Goujun sighed softly. "What I knew immediately were lies. That you'd found evidence in an ongoing military case, and that you'd elected to steal it and sell it to the highest bidder."

Kenren had to smile a little bit for the obfuscation there. "Did they tell you what it was?"

Sounding slightly offended even now, Goujun answered, "I wasn't authorised to know. Which, considering the mission you were on…" Goujun swallowed, going on more quietly, "You found a weapon, I'd thought. One so terrible they couldn't have it. It was the only thing I could think of that would make you run."

After considering that for a moment and weighing what to say, Kenren nodded and said, "That's close enough."

Finally thinking to set the bottle down on the table, Goujun shrugged. "I knew then. I'd have to at least try and help, if I possibly could. If they'd decided to abandon you, I wasn't going to join them."

"I was an easy loss for them to take, don't worry," Kenren said wryly. "So you kicked up a dust trail across two systems trying to help me?"

"I was trying to find out what happened. To help, if I possibly could." He suddenly looked even more tired, weariness and the aftermath of fear weighing his shoulders down. Once again, Kenren had to stop himself reaching for him as he went on. "All I knew was that you were alone and in danger."

One corner of Kenren's mouth curled up at that. "I'm always alone, and in danger is pretty much my cruising speed." He added, more seriously, "Thing is, though...They're after me for a reason. I'm not innocent, Goujun. You need to know that.

"Are you guilty of anything unethical?" The disbelief in Goujun's tone eased a little of Kenren's hurt and suspicion. He shook his head.

"No."

Goujun nodded firmly, strength returning to his voice. "That's what I thought."

Kenren nodded, even gave Goujun a little smile. "Right. It's all a done deal, and now I just have to keep my ass out of the sling, and everything'll be fine." It wouldn't be, though. He could feel things sliding into place in his mind, puzzling out the whole picture, now that he'd met with Goujun. Now he knew for sure that Kenren was alive and that he'd definitely committed a crime. He also had at least one good place to start looking again, later. Or for _them_ to. Fuck.

"I can help with that," Goujun said quietly, a thread of resolve in the centre of his words. "Create false leads. Claim I've received information that guides them away from you."

A wave of warmth and not a little tenderness washed through Kenren for Goujun's offer, for the fact that he really would try even without knowing what Kenren had actually done. It was suicidally trusting, and probably the greatest compliment Kenren had ever been given. The way Goujun looked at him then told him it was real, that Kenren hadn't been alone in that, after all. Still, though, Goujun wasn't cut out for this kind of thing, and leaving him to his own devices, isolated as cover (at least until Kenren could manage to build a network around him, which would take a lot longer from hiding) and actively lying to the army, didn't seem like the best idea either of them ever had. Gently, Kenren asked, "Think you could manage that? Integrity, remember?" It sounded like an insult, but Kenren had to trust that Goujun would understand.

"I would do it, for the right thing," Goujun answered, and his gaze was as steady as his voice. Kenren had never heard him sound quite like that. It reminded him why he'd let Goujun get close in the first place.

"Couldn't stay put for it, though."

"Staying put and doing nothing wasn't right." That cool grey gaze held Kenren's own, and the certainty in it was undeniable. And new. Goujun had always been the one to follow the rules, but - as Kenren had come to know, and was being reminded even now - not out of weakness, as some men do. He really _believed_ in the structure and that systems could work. Thing was, this one didn't and wouldn't, and now Goujun was just as ready to stand against it as he had been for it. Kenren was both impressed and not a little exasperated by that. They'd had so many throwdowns over the years...

"It meant I didn't have to worry about you, too," he said.

Goujun frowned at him slightly. "I didn't-" he started, then slumped a little bit.

Moving past Goujun to the table and the bottle on it, Kenren said, "Well, done is done. You're here now." A little of his own reckless pleasure coloured Kenren's voice, and he chided himself for letting that happen. He was supposed to be making Goujun want to leave, and to leave Kenren alone. Several things were becoming evident, however, and Kenren didn't like any of them. He opened the bottle of brandy, realised that Idora hadn't taken the booze into account, shrugged, and took a deep swig from the bottle.

"The brandy was when I knew I would be able to actually meet you," Goujun's said, his voice a little weak. Kenren hated hearing it. Goujun wasn't uncertain like that, and it gave him a little pang to be the one to have made it happen. Not that he'd never thought that Goujun could do with a reality check now and then, but this was...different.

He gave Goujun a little smile - more like his habitual smirk, actually - and nodded. "I knew you'd get the message." Another swig, and Kenren reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. It felt like a lifetime since he stepped into this room and out of reality, and he needed to think. He put the bottle down on the table and lit up, settling on one of the little chairs and putting the bottle back on the table in invitation to Goujun. Eyes closed, Kenren leaned and let his head fall back, spinning his mind out over the situation and the possibilities. He could practically feel Goujun watching him.

"I know."

Kenren frowned as he lifted his head, stretched his neck left and right, and he looked up at Goujun, one eye still closed against the smoke from his cigarette. "Hmm?"

Goujun smiled a little, his expression much softer now it had been since Kenren came in. More like it had been the last time they met. "Nothing," he said, shaking his head. "I've missed our talks."

"Yeah," Kenren sighed, plucking the smoke from his mouth, "Me, too." He watched Goujun move toward the table, perch on the other chair, and reach for the bottle. For one second, it felt like it used to, as if they might just be sitting at some bar, like they had before.

"They're going to throw everything they have at neutralising you," Goujun ventured, and took a drink. "I knew that the second they took me into interrogation." Kenren could hear the strain and exhaustion in Goujun's voice, and his stomach tightened.

Nodding as he took another drag, Kenren scrubbed at the back of his head. They must have picked Goujun up immediately; he'd been off the station within a week of Kenren's disappearing act. "I know. They want me dead. Gone's not good enough."

Goujun looked at Kenren for what felt like a very long time before he huffed a sigh, some of his old annoyance returning in it, like an old friend. "What did you _do_?"

Carefully, still not sure of his plans, Kenren said, "I stole something, like they said."

There was an edge of something - sadness? hurt? - in Goujun's voice as he accepted that. "You said, yes."

"The selling part's a lie, though. I wouldn't, ever."

Goujun accepted that, too. "I know. That would have convinced me, even if the rest hadn't."

Kenren took a long moment to look Goujun over, reassessing, gauging. Eventually, he offered one small truth, quietly. "It could end the war." Goujun's brows rose for that, though he said nothing, obviously waiting for Kenren to finish taking a belt of brandy before moving on. "Maybe _just_ end it, though. But they want to _win._ "

A loud silence fell between them, Kenren watching Goujun carefully, assessing his reactions - he wouldn't have been good at his job if he couldn't do that well - and tucking them away for future reference. A slow exhale broke the silence before Goujun's voice did. "While I can't deny the attraction of that, I wouldn't want it at the cost of further loss of life." He seemed to consider for a moment and then, sounding slightly surprised, added, "On either side." None of his usual tells manifested, to Kenren's relief.

"This thing…" Kenren started, then took a drag of his smoke while he gathered words, looking for the right ones to make Goujun understand, "it might not stop it. Might win it for us, might not. I can't tell yet. But I couldn't let them have it, not with what they'd do." The image of the Goku's huge eyes and goofy grin rose in his mind. He remembered the scars, though, too, and the wary trust Goku had given him, knowing that whatever was coming for him was going to be bad, and believing that Kenren wasn't a part of that. Just the thought made him shiver. Goose on his grave, as his mom used to say, and...maybe so. Just maybe.

Goujun was quiet for a long moment, just watching while Kenren fell into that momentary reverie. Maybe he was assessing, too. That would be fair. "Then," he said quietly, "you're looking into using this...information, or tool, or…" he made a vague gesture with his hands, "to stop the war, yes?"

A thin stream of smoke raced and billowed in the indirect light of the room as Kenren nodded. "It's safe now. Got some people looking into it."

"Good people?"

Kenen couldn't help but grin for that question, a hundred compromising memories of Tenpou piling up inside his head immediately, along with several of his more amusing arguments with Konzen. "One of them's the only other person I've ever trusted." Honour-among-thieves-style, but Goujun didn't need to hear about that. His personnel file was more than enough ammo all by itself, thanks. Goujun looked intrigued.

"I hadn't thought to hear that from you."

"We used to work together," Kenren shrugged. "Smartest bastard I ever met. Bioengineer."

The frown on Goujun for that was almost comical. "When did you ever work with a bioengineer?"

Kenren shrugged one shoulder, now, grinning more. "It was more like 'near' than 'with', but we got on."

"It didn't think you actually got on with most people," Goujun said, a slightly sharp edge on the words.

Leaning back and giving Goujun an annoyed look, Kenren shot back, "Hey, I'm _personable_."

"But you don't get along with them because you're being yourself." Goujun frowned, peering at Kenren with narrowed eyes. "I...you're a very private person."

That struck deep, and Kenren remained silent for a long moment, adjusting to that, pushing back his first response and forming something more...diplomatic. "That doesn't mean I'm not me with people." There were a lot of things under those words, Kenren waiting to see if Goujun understood. He wasn't about to do more; the finer the line, the deeper the possible lacerations, after all.

"Thank you for telling me," Goujun offered, more quietly and gently, soothing his uncertainty a little. Kenren reached for the bottle again, needing that and his smoke for this conversation.

"Better believe me." The words slipped out on a curl of smoke, ending in the neck of the bottle.

"I do."

There was a simple sincerity in that, settling into Kenren's mind as truth, and he took what felt like his first deep breath since he left. There was so much back then, back there…. He took another swig from the bottle and popped his smoke back into his mouth, leaning back and stretching out one leg as he reached out to pull the ashtray closer. "Anyway, things are in good hands."

Goujun took the bottle when Kenren offered it, the ghost of a smile that Kenren understood hovering at the corners of his mouth. He never got any less pretty, Kenren found himself thinking, not since the first time he'd laid eyes on the man. He looked tired, but not as tired as when Kenren had first come in. Some measure of the Goujun he'd come to know was returning to those fine grey eyes as they rediscovered each other and the ground they had created between them.

Taking the bottle from Kenren again, Goujun drank, the brief wince for the burn of it so familiar to Kenren that it made him ache a little. "And how have you been?" he asked, and Kenren couldn't help but grin and chuckle for the ludicrousness, the sheer inanity of it in this place, after all this time.

"I've been...okay," Kenren answered on a cloud of smoke. "Busy with messages about you looking for me, but apart from that I've pretty much managed to be where they're not."

A rueful little smile lifted the corner of Goujun's mouth. "I hadn't realised I was stirring up that much of a storm."

Kenren waved that off with a sigh; maybe he'd been too hard on Goujun in trying to get him to understand the level of danger in what he had been doing. "My contacts are sharp and quick. You weren't as noticeable as all that to people who weren't looking, but you don't really know how to do this inconspicuously, either."

"Well, I was never supposed to wind up in intelligence."

"Yeah. You're good at the job you do, but there's a reason you were handling me."

Goujun's features twisted into a wry grimace. "Aside from being the sheltered fourth son of a diplomat?"

That level of shit-talk about Goujun wasn't something Kenren was prepared to deal with from anyone, including Goujun. He frowned heavily for it, his voice gaining an edge. "Doesn't fucking matter how you got there. Only that you're good at it. You've got a head for that stuff, and you're ridiculously meticulous."

Trying (and failing) to hide his pleasure in Kenren's defense of him, Goujun made a little sound of acceptance. "You have a point," he said, and took another drink. "I didn't know if you thought I was good at it." Goujun's pale skin was beginning to take on the little flush that drinking inevitably gave him, making even a couple of drinks look like several, by his appearance. Some things, Kenren realised, he hadn't even known he had noticed. It was a strange experience.

"Of course I do," Kenren retorted, as if this had been unavoidably obvious. "You even turned up to keep me out of fights."

"I eventually had ulterior motives for that," Goujun replied with a smile, and Kenren couldn't not return it. He watched his ex-boss over the bottle and through smoke.

"And I had need of it."

That seemed to startle Goujun, eyes wide as he asked, "Did you?" It was an odd reaction to have, from the guy who started it in the first place.

"Of course I did," Kenren went on quietly, fingers picking at the label on the bottle. "New transfer, out on missions constantly, no time to settle in proper…. Life as a one-night stand."

Goujun's voice was warm in a way that Kenren knew, attempting a joke. "I thought you liked one-night stands." The guy always had been just a little too earnest to pull off a confident flirt. Not that that didn't have its charms.

"Part of life," Kenren answered around his smoke, "not the definition of it."

"You seemed to...appreciate my being around, yes." A moment of quiet fell them as Goujun took a drink. It was softer than the last, though it held a lot more in it.

Taking the bottle back when offered, Kenren took a drink, too. Things had been settling in the back of his brain while they talked, and it was beginning to look like there wasn't any reason not to just tell him. "Well, you were never looking to fight me, for a start," he teased with a little grin. It got him an answering smile from Goujun, and for a moment, he looked like they had back home. If 'home' was the right word for it. He hadn't had one in so long he hadn't even noticed that happening. Or maybe that wasn't about the _place_.

"So it was my pacifism that recommended me?"

Kenren shrugged, still smiling. "Sure, why not?"

Another pregnant silence enveloped them, this one longer and more tense, as Kenren watched Goujun struggle with himself. He wasn't terribly surprised when Goujun finally burst out, "...so you _didn't_ see me as a one-night stand, then?"

"Well, not if you didn't," Kenren said, careful not to put any edges on it that Goujun could misinterpret. He hadn't known what was going to happen between them, but he had thought they would have more time to figure it out. He hadn't meant to leave it (him) hanging like that.

Goujun's expression could only be described by the word 'gaping' his eyes wide, his mouth open. "I wouldn't know how to have a one-night stand," he protested, and Kenren only just avoided snort-choking on a mouthful of brandy.

"Well," Kenren answered helpfully, "you meet someone, you fuck them, and then you don't do it again." He considered that, then amended, "After morning." Thought for a second longer, then, "For a while, anyway."

In all the time they had known each other, Kenren had never seen Goujun blush like he did now, thoroughly scandalised. "It's navigating what goes before having sex and after not doing it again that concerns me," he said, and Kenren grinned hugely, pleased with his effect.

"...Be nice? That's usually how I work it."

Goujun huffed loudly and fixed Kenren with a disapproving eye. "I...see."

Kenren sighed, knowing what Goujun was getting at, what he couldn't bring himself to just ask. "You know I wasn't running from you, right? Not even a little bit of it was that." Sure enough, he could all but hear the tension draining from Goujun's shoulders, leaving the area around his eyes, leaving him looking...quite soft, actually. A little more worn out, though.

"I...hoped so. I knew so, once I found out you were wanted." Goujun's voice rose a little, almost like it was a question, and Kenren nodded.

"Like I said, one of the two whole people I've ever properly trusted. No reason to run."

That seemed to please Goujun, and he brightened a little bit, straightening up, a little more of that tension leaving him as he leaned forward, closer to Kenren. "No reason for me either," he said, smiling. "I trust you, and I...I _like_ you."

Aw, fuck, how was he supposed to resist that? "I like you, too," Kenren answered quietly, "even when I'm winding you up."

"Especially then, you mean," Goujun shot back, and the old brightness was in his eyes.

Kenren flashed his best winning delinquent grin. "Yeah, maybe I do."

"Disorderly to the bone."

"Yeah, I guess I can't hide that," Kenren chuckled, perving on that fairly seriously. Goujun immediately looked like he was on firmer footing again, and it was good to see that.

"You're quite good at hiding things, though," Goujun ventured, turning them back to the issue at hand.

Shrugging, Kenren took the last drag of his smoke and crushed it out in the ashtray, then reached immediately for another. "When I need to." It was an admission, again, his mind running over the possibilities and coming up with an answer he still didn't like. The upshot was that it really did mean there was no more reason to obfuscate.

"I wouldn't argue," Goujun said, "especially since I still haven't heard what the thing you're being chased for even was."

It wasn't as if it was going to matter, and in fact, he could even make an argument to himself that it would make things easier when it came to the crunch, so he sparked up another cigarette and spoke on the exhale. "Remember when I said they found a pilot?"

"Yes?" Goujun's answer was bated.

Kenren nodded for that and plunged ahead. "Well, they did. Only that one's no good, like I told you way back when. No telling if that'll ever change." An encouraging nod from Goujun. "See, but once they knew it was there, then they knew to give the mech pilots orders, so...they got another one. Almost unharmed. Conscious."

Goujun went very, very still for that. " _Conscious_."

Kenren's lip pressed tightly together for a moment before he continued. "I managed to get access to him."

"I see." There was a hint of concern in Goujun's voice, though he kept it small. Kenren watched him extrapolate, already likely getting to the answer that Kenren hadn't given him yet. "And what did you make of him?"

"He's just a kid, as far as I can tell. Barely old enough to join up, or whatever." Once again, Kenren remembered being that young, his first days as a soldier.

"I assume that's the 'asset' you liberated?"

"You assume right."

Goujun nodded, more certain, now. "And I assume he's with that bioengineer friend of yours, in a carefully undisclosed location that will remain undisclosed."

"Smart man," Kenren grinned, and grabbed the bottle.

"Can he communicate?" Goujun leaned in, as if they might be overheard. "Is he verbal?"

"Oh, he's definitely verbal. Was starting to learn a few words from me before we got there, even. Got a personality like a rubber ball."

"You like him." There was a hint of amused accusation in it.

"Maybe a little," Kenren said, and took a drag of his smoke to cover his smile.

More seriously, Goujun asked, "He's worth the cost of protecting him, then?"

"He might be. If anyone can make that happen, it's the guys I took him to."

Another moment of calculation, Kenren letting Goujun think while he took another drink, the brandy burning a trail of caressing fire down his throat. He'd have to stop soon, though. Not a good idea to compromise his ability to think or move.

"And you're..drawing the fire away from them?

"To some extent, yes. Not that they're that easy to get to, in the first place, though." Kenren could feel his chest loosening as he told Goujun all the things he thought he'd never be able to. Maybe this was going to be it, anyway, but at least Goujun knew what had happened...what was still happening.

"And you're just going to keep running for as long as it takes, aren't you?"

A sharp pang hit his stomach for that. "Fucking right, I am. I got a bioengineer and a fucking linguist after that kid, and they'll get what we need." He took a long drag of his smoke and then added, "Without tearing him open."

Goujun nodded as he took the bottle again. "If we could just find something with which we could end the war..."

"He could," Kenren said fiercely, needing to believe it, too. "They can. They just need time."

A deep crease formed between Goujun's brows, his eyes darting this way and that while he thought, and Kenren hadn't really realised how much he had missed watching Goujun run down possibilities, "And when the time comes, there will be people we can reach out to. I know there's a strong pro-armistice faction in the military. I just haven't made contact, because, well. I'm apolitical." He shrugged a little, with a carelessness Kenren didn't think he'd ever seen on him before. He fixed Goujun with a calculating look.

"How hard will that be?"

"Not very hard. I'm personally acquainted with a couple of them, and I think some others are family friends."

"Can you trust them?" Kenren asked. ( _Can I trust you?_ )

Goujun caught and held Kenren's gaze. "I can trust them." More quietly, "And I will maintain your safety, I promise."

Well, that was it, then. Back against the wall, no time left for consideration. He shifted, easy as always, and pulled his gun, pointing it almost casually at Goujun as he plucked the smoke from his mouth. "Yeah, you will."

There was a quiet moment where Kenren watched Goujun register the new situation, looking from Kenren to the gun and then back again. He frowned, and in a low, bemused tone, asked, "What _are_ you doing?"

That was not the expected response. Kenren sighed softly. He'd rather not be doing this, but he needed Goujun to know he was serious. "You've got to come with me."

He really must have been spending too much time with Kenren, because what emerged from Goujun was far more baffled than outraged. " _I beg your fucking pardon_."

Kenren couldn't not laugh for that, though he was careful not to lower the gun. "Never what I thought I'd get you to beg for, but okay."

"...is this...you're _kidnapping_ me?"

Shrugging, Kenren grinned around his smoke. "I got no choice, now. Alternatively, you could just come with me, but I couldn't bank on you wanting to."

Somehow managing to wrap a sense of incredible offense in a slightly hysterically amused tone, Goujun pointed out, "...wouldn't the logical first point be checking?

"Not with you."

Goujun blinked, then conceded, "...you might be right."

"I need you to get it. I can't let you go back now."

Once again, Kenren gave Goujun time to consider, prepared to watch his thoughts race across his features. He'd also never been one to think placidly. Which was why, Kenren had eventually reasoned out, he rarely allowed anyone to see him do it. Again, why Goujun was a handler and not an operative. He didn't think though, just looked steadily at Kenren and answered, "I know. And I don't want to go back."

Kenren blinked slowly at him, and though he wasn't giving Goujun a choice, he still had to ask, "Are you sure? If you turn on me, I won't hesitate."

"I'm well aware of that." He sounded it.

After waiting a long moment to see if Goujun was going to rethink or take it back, Kenren grinned a bit and put his gun away, though he was braced to move, if need be. Just in case. When Goujun remained still and quiet, Kenren said, "All right, then."

Goujun leaned back deliberately in his chair, arms relaxed, watching Kenren. "You're sure I won't drag you down?"

"I can teach you," Kenren said, and he took a long breath, steadying himself before he added, "I want you with me."

Goujun's colour shifted again, his skin flushing, though his voice was low and quiet, as if they were sharing a secret. "I want that, too. I think that's part of why I left."

"Yeah?" He didn't mean to sound disbelieving. Goujun simply nodded. "...Why?"

That garnered Kenren the slightly exasperated frown he got every time he made Goujun say something he didn't want to. "I seem to have, ah," He cleared his throat. "That is. Grown attached to you."

Well, fuck, he couldn't resist that, now, could he? Smiling rather more softly than usual, Kenren leaned over to put out his smoke, then reached out to curl a hand in Goujun's hair, holding him still and claiming his mouth in a lingering kiss, pleased to feel Goujun's arm around his back, a hand eagerly gripping his jacket.

It took Kenren a while to feel able to break free, and he didn't move very far at all, speaking against Goujun's mouth. "We can talk more about that on my ship."

Goujun smiled, curling a hand around Kenren's neck, teasing, " _Your_ ship?"

"What, you think I can't fly a ship?"

One eyebrow arching, Goujun answered dryly, "I just sorely doubt that you came to own it by legitimate means."

Kenren chuckled low for that, and kissed him again. "Legitimate's relative."


End file.
